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This sounds relatively mundane — until you get to the part where I left because my father was quite possibly homicidal and evidently attempted to murder my mother. Or the part where my mother saw nothing wrong with the fact her own husband might be trying to off her, but thought that I was possessed by Satan and also compared me quite earnestly to Hitler. Or the part about the fires in the walls.

(Or the part where I would have had to cut ties even if they had been relatively sane, as they were painfully close-minded — and pansexual little me was moving in with her then-girlfriend.)

Or, my particular favourite — the part where my own parents promptly called the cops on me! For moving out! At age twenty-two! After having left them a letter explaining that I was leaving of my own volition, and why!

(Coming out to my parents via the West Virginian police was a close second favourite, though. That was fun.)

Five years later, and my strongest memory of that day is still the fact that I didn’t cry, not until Here Comes the Sun came on in the car.

Five years later, and I’m still not in contact with my parents, and have no plans to be. People talk about the importance of family, imply that one day I will realise this and “come to my senses” and so play the prodigal daughter card.

But if there is one thing I have learned in these past years, it’s this:

Family is not limited to whose blood flows through you, and it most certainly is not who would shed your own blood, or the blood of the people that you love.

Family is who you would shed blood for.

Family is a foundation, not something that should tear you down.

And I left because I do value the ideal of family, and don’t care to see it defiled in that way.

On that front, I have absolutely no regrets.

And if there’s another thing I’ve learned in these five years, it’s that the other most important thing is Story. Sure, I may have gone through a completely traumatic experience — but who else can say that they came out to their parents via the West Virginian police? That their own mother confused them with Hitler? This isn’t something that’s going to break me. It’s something that I can use as fodder, to build a foundation all my own.

And the stories I’ve gotten since have been pretty damn beautiful, too. I’ve met people since who have been beautiful stories in and of themselves, and who have made beautiful stories with me.

So I suppose that, all in all, I might just have to count myself lucky.

For those not that familiar with astrology, this means the way that I express myself (Mercury being communication and thought) is naturally very Scorpionic. It’s particularly noticeable in my writing — I prefer my prose smoky, blurring almost into poetry, where direct statements are all but mythical creatures and instead double-meanings and wordplay abound. (And when something is direct, it is typically either snark or sex. Or death, whether metaphorical or no. Or all of the above.) Rebirth is a very common theme; I am all about the Persephone archetype, here.

And it was in all of the Scorpio that I found my voice. All of the Scorpio is my voice.

But there’s another side to it, too, another way that Scorpio can manifest, that I never really touched. Not until last night.

And then last night, my muse was suddenly somehow ripping it right out of me, and I found myself spilling words in a voice that hardly anyone would recognise as mine.

This? This is raw and bloody and blatant and bruised and desperate and absolutely unapologetic in its wants. (And it does want. Badly.)

And damn did I have fun.

I’m thinking this may just need to be something that I explore further and continue to play around with — so don’t be surprised if you find some rather un-Jaceylike prose popping up here soon! :)

(Also, expect more on the subject of astrology as it pertains to writing — astrology and tarot for writers are two of my biggest passions. Or, rather, it’s all of my biggest passions, rolled into one.)

And because I cannot personally tackle you all with love and glitter and libraries (yes, entire libraries, shush)…have an announcement today, instead!

Come April, barring explosions and/or sudden death or dismemberment, I plan to release my first ebook, titled “& the galaxy is you: love stories at the end of the world.”

As the title would suggest, it’s a novella-length collection of shorts, all based around the theme of (surprise!) love at the end of the world.

A tiny snippet, as an example!

What I remember most are the lights on the water.
Buildings were falling all around us, the once-familiar skyline suddenly the world’s most expensive set of dominoes. Cars were crashing, from panic and debris both, making piles of themselves as if in some attempt to fill in the skyline’s new gaping holes. People were screaming, high and guttural and pained and raw. There were prayers, a constant litany of all faiths — and no faith at all, but rather desperation instead — blurring into one single background hum.
You stood beside me and held my hand.
We stopped, quietly, in the middle of a bridge. The city was clearly no longer safe, no, but neither was there anywhere left to go. The roads were as dangerous as the city’s heart, now, and as for me I think I’d rather die standing on my own ground.
I’d rather die beside you.
I’d rather face this down.
So we stood there, on the bridge, and I breathed in time with your pounding pulse, and our fingers both grew white with our own tightening grips as if in practice for becoming bone.

And, perhaps most excitingly of all… I was lucky enough to have my darling friend Fishie, who is fabulous and talented to a truly ridiculous degree and many other positive adjectives, agree to do the cover design for me!

And the mock-up of it she put together today?

Jesus Christ on a crawfish. It’s so beautiful I literally could have cried:

SO.

For all that I appreciate all of the books and cute things strewn about today, damn if I’m not looking forward to spring, and I hope you all are too. :)

See, once upon a time, I had this beautiful library, housed inside two beautiful six-foot bookcases that still overflowed even despite their size (and that I loved so much they even had names), that I had been building up ever since I was a little girl.

That library was my pride and joy. That library was the only place I had that was home.

And then there came my Epic Appalachian Escape, in which I literally had to just throw my cats and as many of my belongings as I could fit into my friends car and leave behind everything else, everything, in order to extricate myself from my incredibly unstable and abusive family. (My family who then called the cops on me, incidentally. Just for moving out of their house. At age twenty-two.)

I lost the vast majority of that library, then.

(Leaving everything I’d ever known behind and launching myself right into a very nebulous and uncertain future instead — that, I could do. Losing my library? That was a bitch. Bookslut priorities, indeed.)

Now, I’ve acquired many more books since then, of course. I work in a bloody bookstore for a reason, after all.

But I don’t have a library, not anymore.

I don’t have gorgeous bookcases in which to put them. They aren’t meticulously, obsessively, organised. I see them all as individual books, here and there, not one ridiculously sprawling whole all contained one space where I can fawn over them.

They aren’t a library.

Because to me, a library means home, and I didn’t know if a luxury like that could ever really be mine. After all, what would happen when I — inevitably, I thought — had to leave again? I couldn’t feasibly expect to take an entire library with me, especially not if I had to run away again, if I had to leave with very little warning.

But in 2014, I’ve decided, fuck that.

I’m someplace now that I actually want to call home, that I don’t want to leave, and so dammit, I will have a library here.

Because after all, what home is complete without one? :)

A library makes this official.

And so lovely new bookcases shall be acquired, and I’ll begin the process of rebuying old favourites to fill them, and a library will be built, and that will be that.

♥

And my Writerly Resolution for 2014?

I am going to throw myself, whole-heartedly, into following my muse. I will rip every single word out of myself that I have locked away, I will break down my mental walls like bones until sentences run like blood, and I will give myself over to this.

Completely.

Partly because this is what I was built for. Partly because I’ve no real choice in the matter. (My muse is an insistent sort of thing, it seems, and it owns me so thoroughly that even my viciously stubborn brain is absolutely overcome.)

But mostly just because this, too, is what I want.

2013 was the year where I truly found my muse, and fuck me sideways if I’m not going to spend 2014 holding on and giving in.

:)

Happy 2014 to all of you beautiful people, and I hope your upcoming year is every bit as beautiful as you. ♥

Happy Christmas to those of you who celebrate it (and happy Wednesday for those of you who don’t)! ♥

In…Jacey-styled festive news, I’ve spent the holiday playing Arkham Horror with my roommate (as that was one of the presents I got her, and this is the sort of thing we do).

And it’s no secret that I’m a complete sucker for fantasy/horror set in the 1920s, as this is.

But…this game got me thinking.

What’s it going to be like, decades from now, when people start writing urban fantasy set in the 1990s instead, or god help us all, now?

He stared at the creature that had materialised in front of him, and swallowed hard. What the hell kind of hashtag could he even use to describe this thing, anyway?

Would he even be able to make a status update about it, or would the damn thing eat his iPhone if he got too close? Sneaking away was no longer an option; the sound when he had snapped the picture of it had already attracted its attention, and it was staring right back at him, its strange body tense and coiled, ready to spring.

He could either turn and attempt to outrun it, or he could make a last stand and try to fight instead.

To hell with it, he thought, and held his headphones up like a garrote.

My newest writing project, Fires in the Walls — my memoir of the epic Appalachian insanity I grew up surrounded by, including a potentially-homicidal father and a mother who both compared me to Hitler and thought I was possessed by demons — is still going strong! :)

I’m now trying out a twice-weekly update schedule as opposed to just once a week, with updates coming on Tuesdays and Saturdays.